


Winter Swans

by TakeTheShot



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angst, Clint Barton's PoV, Clint Needs a Hug, Happy Ending, Inside his head, Inspired by Poetry, M/M, Newly established relationship, SHIELD Husbands, So does Phil to be honest, Weather Symbolism, because of course there's a happy ending, even if Clint doesn't quite trust it yet, gorgeous but harsh, i probably used too much pathetic fallcy in this, idiots negotitating love, not always the most positive place to be, off-screen arguments, phlint - Freeform, they're in love aren't they?, wales in winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23098519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TakeTheShot/pseuds/TakeTheShot
Summary: “I’m going for a walk. Do you want to come?”Clint’s head jerks up from the paperback he’s spent most of the day pretending to read to find Phil standing over him, face drawn, tense.He blinks. “What?”It’s just…they’re the first words Phil’s spoken to him beyond clipped necessaries of telling him to file his reports or letting him know there was food in the kitchen in, god, almost 26 hours and for a second that makes them hard to parse.He blinks. "A walk?"Phil's brow furrows. "Yes, a walk. The fog's finally lifted." He looks away. "Are you coming?"-----A beautiful little Welsh countryside town in winter, a lovely safehouse, his awesome friend recently turned boyfriend and an extended extraction period with nobody to bother them. It should have been amazing, and yet somehow there's nothing but fog and silence. Clint's afraid that he knows what comes next. Aw, fuck.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Phil Coulson
Comments: 58
Kudos: 174





	Winter Swans

**Author's Note:**

> So, sometimes I work as an exam invigilator and mostly it is extremely boring. However, one day recently I snuck a look at the GCSE English Lit paper, read one of the set poems and then spent a very pleasant two hours staring into space and imagining it as a Phlint thing. This fic is the result and I hope you enjoy it x
> 
> (p.s. the setting, if you're interested, is based on a little Welsh town called Llanidloes where I once spent a very happy winter weekend and which had the thickest fog and most beautiful frosty scenery I've ever seen x)

Inspired by the poem ‘Winter Swans’ by Owen Sheers.

>>===>>

“I’m going for a walk. Do you want to come?”

Clint’s head jerks up from the paperback he’s spent most of the day pretending to read to find Phil standing over him, face drawn, tense. 

He blinks. “What?”

It's just...they’re the first words Phil’s spoken to him beyond clipped necessaries of telling him to file his reports or letting him know there was food in the kitchen in, god, almost 26 hours and for a second that makes them hard to parse. Clint himself hasn’t spoken at all, not since they’d crashed into this tiny Welsh cottage of a safehouse and the extended extraction period that was probably meant to be some sort of gift from Fury to celebrate the brand-new (and somehow not-new-at-all) update in their relationship status but that instead had lurched them from an op just barely rescued from going so far bad as to be catastrophic to a bitter and panic-fuelled de-briefing to tearing, desperate, angry sex and then to just a screaming crack of anger in a sudden verbal whiplash shit explosion of work and life and fear and love and wounded pride that had left them both panting and silent. His voice cracks now from disuse, from the rubble and shrapnel, the bruises of saying too much and then not saying _enough_ and it echoes stupidly around the crater between them. 

“A walk?”

Across the pit, Phil’s brow furrows, “Yes, a walk. The fog’s finally lifted.” He looks away. “Are you coming?”

“Yeah,” It’s not easy to uncurl, to leave the window seat where he’s been wedged for too many hours, looking through the glass and trying to pretend that the freezing swirl is outside and not inside, his joints crack and creak like old wood, reluctant to straighten. But he emerges, slowly. “Yeah, I’ll come.”

They kneel in the tiny entrance porch to strap on boots, to pull on laces and Clint finds himself watching Phil’s hands in the grey light, mesmerised. It’s stupid, but _Phil’s hands_. Those are the hands that took him down and finally stopped him when he was still running, that were then the first not long after to shake his when he was accepted into S.H.I.E.L.D. Those are the hands that have been beside his on a thousand triggers, curled into fists in a thousand fights, passed a million files and weapons and coffees, accepted the same in reports and packages of sugared junk-food, that have held the edges of countless wounds. They’ve stretched out for him and to him through numberless falls and every time, every single time, _caught_. Clint shudders, he can’t help it. He stares. Those are the hands that had trembled across the distance between his body and Phil’s the first time he’d reached to touch him in the way he’d been wanting for so long, that had clung so _tight_ , that had slid, sweat-slick, down his spine, and afterward cradled him so warmly, so firmly, so gently. That have always held him so. And yet somehow, those are the hands that just hours ago he’d ripped away from and rejected, that at the height of their argument he’d slapped sharply and harshly away. 

Clint can feel the weight of them, the warmth, the way they curve and fit into his own. The need to reach out makes his chest physically ache but he doesn’t know how, the crater is too big, lined with the shattered spikes of broken words, and to fall back into it, to drag them both into it again…

“Ready?” 

He’s not. 

Clint swallows. “Yeah. Ready.”

Outside it’s cold enough that Clint can see his breath, Phil’s, and the air feels thick with the razor-edges of frost. Every breath in burns, each one out spirals away upwards towards the clouds that hang glowering over their heads, threatening, as if the freezing fog could come back at any time. Somewhere, the sun is probably trying to break through but, well. Who trusts that? The cold seeps into Clint’s skin, his clothes, settles into his hair, he holds himself stiff under its weight.

The thin streets are almost deserted as they walk them, their boots thudding dully on cobbles. Maybe it’s the weather or time of year, maybe even the day of the week, Clint’s lost track somewhere in that stubborn, silent stretch of time and has no idea whether it’s Sunday trading or Wednesday half-day, but whichever, the doors to the little shops lining the high-street are closed, shutters down. He scans the windows as they pass, all of them piled high with lovely displays. Rainbow-striped woollen blankets and cushions, local honey, sweets in old-fashioned jars. Beeswax candles, leather bound books in glowing colours, notepaper, bath-bombs, biscuits, little ornaments and pots.

Phil walks ahead, just a half-step, a half-mile half-step, his stride awkward, off-balance, his hand hanging open, empty at his side. Clint watches it swing, fingers curved, unfilled, and he flexes his own fingers, feels the hollow ache in his own palm. Every few steps Phil turns, looks over his shoulder, his lips pursed, parted, the start of something on his tongue but Clint can’t make himself meet his eyes, can’t make himself see what’s in them, how much further there is to fall. Instead, each time Phil turns he looks aside, back at the dark windows and at the displays. At all that sweetness, all that softness laid out and all of it unreachable. The third or fourth time Clint fails, Phil frowns and snaps himself back forward, his spine straightening, stride lengthening, his shoulders setting square. His sigh is silent but Clint sees it anyway, a plume of bitter white, curling and roiling as it rises away of their heads and Phil’s hand spasms before he crushes it into a fist, shoves it deep into his pocket.…and, oh. _No_.

All at once the pavement seems to tilt and Clint wants to run back to the safehouse, lock the door and crawl back into that window seat for eternity because suddenly he knows where they must be going. And why.

After all, he’s seen it enough times before. When a recruit isn’t working out or an agent isn’t cutting it or an asset needs to be cut loose, Phil takes them somewhere, away to somewhere neutral to break it to them. He always chooses somewhere they don’t know or should never need to go again, where the news won’t create any bad memories or unsafe spaces for them to carry back into their working lives. It’s a tried and tested technique of Phil’s, a kindness, because Phil is kind to the core, and now Clint looks around at the country lane that they’ve come to at the edge of the town, at the stile, the fields, the edge of woodland where the leaves and grasses are all rimed and sparkling with frost like they’re crusted with ephemeral diamonds and it’s all gorgeous, it’s a gorgeous place and it means _absolutely fucking nothing_ to him. 

Nothing. 

Aw, shit.

It’s fine, he understands it. Deserves it, even. After all the things said, the accusations flung left right and centre, all of them whetted on terror and panic and the delayed fear of loss, of losing this, _them,_ now that they finally _finally_ had it, a dread that he hadn’t known how to control coating every word, sharp and deadly, unprofessional, unreasonable, unguarded and unfair and all thrown at Phil, he gets it. It makes sense, unavoidable, inevitable sense. Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe they shouldn’t, can’t after all, even though he _wants_ …they can’t be…Clint swallows, turns his face to the sky. God, it’s gorgeous.

This would, he thinks, be the most beautiful place to scream.

He doesn’t. He keeps walking even though the frost cracks thin beneath his boots and the mud of the mire beneath drags on his soles (soul) and threatens to pull him down. Nat has a thing for watching period dramas after a mission, historical things with all the costumes and fancy language. She’s made him (them) sit through several with her and he doesn’t (they don’t) mind them, actually quite enjoys the Bronte-type ones, the breeches and bonnets stuff. But the earlier ones set, Tudors and Stuarts, red and white roses, all the kings and queens and knights, all that, no, not so much. There’s always, inevitably, treason and torture and then an execution scene and every time it makes his gut squirm because…just…how did they do it? Those condemned kings, those doomed queens, how did they make themselves _move?_ He’s never been able to fathom it. How did they manage to worry about eloquent speeches and stuff like wearing two shirts, to think about their dignity of all things when they had that journey to make? How do you tell your feet to move, when the only place they can take you is to the block? The blade and the blood and the basket? Beyond any acting or storytelling or dramatics this shit really happened and that’s always made him feel sick. Clint knows about risks, sure, weighs them, takes them, kinda loves them, but how do you physically make your legs go forward when there’s only the certainty of nothing to go forward to? Just…how?

Turns out, you just do it. Because you have to. Because you’ve no other choice. Because in the end even the whistle and cut of the blade must be better than the wait.

They walk for a long time, probably, possibly, several fields anyway, walls, fences, woodlands and Phil, that half-mile half-step in front, is a dark, solid line against the pale sky. They walk and Clint watches Phil’s back. He’s done that so many times, literally and figuratively, watched Phil’s back, and he’ll keep doing it, of course he fucking will, of _course_ , but what he won’t do anymore is wrap his arms around it. Won’t press his thumbs in and push them up that spine until the tensions drains out of it, until the muscles are shaking under his hands for completely different reasons. Won’t turn and plaster himself up against it in the night, bury his face between those shoulder blades because that’s the only safe space in the world. He’ll watch, no question, but he won’t…. Not anymore. The cold weighs heavy in his chest, chatters his teeth. His feet must weigh a hundred pounds, the ground is treacherous, every step threatens to be the last one he can manage and yet, he keeps following Phil. Phil never slows, never turns and never leaves him behind.

When they stop at last it’s at the edge of a little lake. The water’s clear and dark, sparkling and edged with thick, straight reeds, there’s one of those weeping trees, leafless but so frosted that it could be covered in white blossom, bowing out low over the water, graceful boughs trailing, touching its own perfect reflection. Clint looks round in a stupor of wonder, so acutely aware of the figure of Phil next to him and he wants to laugh, to burst into tears, to snatch up any stick or stone and just wreak some fucking _havoc_ because it’s so _beautiful_ and it makes him so fucking _angry_. For a moment, the rage is near to blinding. _Fuck_ this place. What business does it have being so beautiful, looking like a fucking fairyland, like some kind of dream when it doesn’t last, when dreams don’t last, when he’s about to lose the best…god, when he’s about to _lose…_

“Clint.”

There’s a quiet, patient rawness in Phil’s tone that Clint’s never heard before and it threatens to buckle his knees. He trembles, head to foot, heart pumping far harder than the exercise to get here warrants, rage washing out to desperation. It bubbles up then in his throat, a scorching dam-burst flood of _‘please’_ and _‘no’_ surging through the rubble, the cold blockade of silence and he chokes it all back because in one more moment he’s going to cry or beg and he _mustn’t_ , he’s made it this far up the scaffold, he ought to just lay his head down with dignity. It’s hard, fuck it’s so, so hard, but surely he owes Phil that at least. 

“Clint.”

Alright. 

He turns, makes himself face Phil and Phil…isn’t looking at him at all, he’s staring out over the lake. Clint looks to see what’s taken his attention and the glow of white feathers against the dark water is a shock. Swans. Yet another ridiculously beautiful thing to hold against this beautiful place and yet…

They’ve appeared apparently from nowhere, a pair of them arriving like they own the whole world and they’re…dancing? Yeah, they’re dancing. It’s astounding. Tipping in unison, dipping and bowing, stretching, they’re lifting their long necks as if they’ve decided to put on a show just for him and Phil. Except, Clint realises as he watches a little more, not really, because this isn’t choreography, it’s closeness. The swans aren’t acting, they’re just, _being_. No planning, no pretence. No panic. They move together, around each other, with each other and each time one leaves an empty space the other is there to fill it and complete the pattern. Not crowding but constant, two moons in orbit. At his side Clint hears Phil’s breath catch and hold, sigh out, catch again. His own chest aches with the swell of familiarity. 

Out on the lake the swans part briefly then glide back together, life rafts righting after rough weather, two halves making one clean whole, over and over again, without faltering and without fail. There’s a stillness to it and such a rightness that Clint can’t look away. Even the silence has changed around them, becoming less reluctant, more reverent and the world seems suspended, held in a perfect bubble, a moment preserved. 

It can’t last forever. A few more dips and curls, a few more bows and apparently it’s all over for now. The swans turn their backs in unison and Clint’s so engrossed in watching them glide smoothly away together that the slide of soft heat into his palm comes as a shock. He startles but grips, holds on and looks down at his hand, suddenly wrapped with Phil’s. He doesn’t remember extending it, didn’t notice Phil taking it, but there they are. It’s like cradling the sun.

“They mate for life you know.” Phil offers, softly, steadily and finally Clint can look up. Slowly, he dares to meet his eyes, and, oh. _Oh_. There’s solid ground. 

Exactly where it’s always been.

Clint’s heart struggles, hitches, calms. He licks his lips, works free his clogged voice. 

“Yeah. Yeah they do.” 

It’s…not elegant, as assurances go, but Phil’s grip tightens and the corner of his mouth curves up, just a little more than a fraction. Clint smiles back and that moment hangs too, their own bubble. 

Eventually, they’re turning in unison, starting to walk. The sky has brightened enough to turn the grass into a carpet of glitter, of surprising, easy, wonderful beauty and they tread it more lightly now walking back, in step and side by side, ground holding beneath their feet. It’s gorgeous. Slowly, the chill in Clint’s bones leeches away under the light and in fact, he feels like he might never really be cold again. Not now. Not with this simple fact become a promise that he knows, _knows_ , they’ll choose and cherish, press and polish and work at together until they make it a fact again. 

Swans, like S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, they mate for life. 

Clint squeezes Phil’s hand and only lets go of the answering press to slip his arm round Phil’s waist and bring him in, his grip sure. Phil’s arm comes up heavy and solid round his back and Clint presses close. Gently, he rests his head against Phil’s shoulder and, as they head home through the sparkling fields, starts to talk.

>>===>>


End file.
